so how does buddhism reconcile with this? you know there are bunch of people saying that they were seeing a tunnel of light felt a loving presence, some interpret this as god other's as a state of bardo

> another study on people who had heart attacks were in death like coma without a working heart and most of them didn't have near death experiences, almost all of them turned to a rationalist-materialist

How is it possible to prove that there is no afterlife, when all you know about it is the time of its occurrence? You can say that hallucinations are not a proof of afterlife, but I hardly see a point in doing so. How can near death experience, be a proof of what happens after death? This makes no sense, right?

One proof is your own life and your own death. And all of your experiences of encountering death in one form or another.These experiences maybe subtle, but it is what we have. People are just seduced by the materialistic/nihilistic idea that there is nothing after death. But you are then pushing away your own experiences. People find comfort in thinking that life ends in death, and buddhism and the like are therefore unnecessary. When you are attached to the nihilistic view, you strenthen your view by clinging to the explanations of hallucinations etc..In buddhism there are other sources of knowledge than what is accepted in science. Buddhism says there are supernormal faculties like the five eyes and five or six abhijña. According to Dharma these are a source of knowledge, but science labels them as "hallucinations" and even worse. Humanity is a mass of people. When there are a hundred thousand, million, ten million or hundred million people holding a nihilistic view, this clinging by large masses creates a kind of relative or habitual reality, which is difficult to break through.

Thank you for your time and effort in digging out all these links, they are indeed very interesting and a good concept to cover.

I am not so sure what is taught or what you have learn regarding the rebirth concept in Buddhism, various schools could have taught this differently.

The rebirth concept I knew of is closely tied to karma, it is regarding the rebirth of the same karma across different lifetime, different generation at same or different places. Buddha taught the doctrine of anatman, no soul or no self, which means it has noting to do with afterlife.

An example of the rebirth here is Grandfather, Father, Grandson, concept. The grandfather of the family, when young, always push the blames (emiting negative karma) to others whenever something happens, the father in turn learns the same and continue doing the same thing. The grandson which in turns grows up learning the same thing, pushing the blame to other whenever something happen.

From this example, the rebirth of the same negative karma of pushing blames to others is reborn across generation.

If the father or the grandfather will to put a stop to the negative karma of pushing the blame to others, then the grandson will not learn this negative karma, and in returns, putting a stop to the rebirth of it.

Rebirth can also happens within self, one common example is that a person could have meditate till the extend of deep wisdom to understand what is anger and stop emitting anger, but one day, he could have been triggered by some negative experience and become very angry for that instance, and thus resulted in the rebirth of the same emotion he had put a stopped to it.

Think of us being in the same big ocean full of people, with everyone sending out ripples of emotion. Today the emotion of anger/blame or negative feeling could have happen at the same spot by different people at different time.

In the third noble truth, to reach enlightenment, is to put a stop to the craving of satisfaction, emitting negative karma and stopping the rebirth. Whether there is an afterlife and non-afterlife or a creator is not important, even Gautama buddha didn't endorse in a creator/god. Seeking a definite answer to this has noting to do with reaching enlightenment/ ending the suffering.

Maybe your understanding and what is taught by your school would be different. Here are my sources in regards to what I have posted.

gandy wrote:so how does buddhism reconcile with this? you know there are bunch of people saying that they were seeing a tunnel of light felt a loving presence, some interpret this as god other's as a state of bardo

> another study on people who had heart attacks were in death like coma without a working heart and most of them didn't have near death experiences, almost all of them turned to a rationalist-materialist

Notice how you've selected similar stories? Now you won't find birds of a feather here. But you will elsewhere. When you all start confirming each other, and making plans, you will understand karma and rebirth. Change your ideas and you change societies.

You have proved that near-death experiences are not an afterlife. Congratulations. However, anyone giving the issue more than a moment's thought would have come to the same conclusion without the neeed for a lot of research. Near-death is not death. There never was any reason to assume that what happens in a near-death situation has anything to do with what happens after death.

KeithBC wrote:You have proved that near-death experiences are not an afterlife. Congratulations. However, anyone giving the issue more than a moment's thought would have come to the same conclusion without the neeed for a lot of research. Near-death is not death. There never was any reason to assume that what happens in a near-death situation has anything to do with what happens after death.

Om mani padme humKeith

Indeed: NDE = Non Death Experience. Close perhaps, but not the same thing.

Edwards: You are a philosopher. Dr Johnson: I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.

Besides of the obvious point that near death expirience is not death you should think that there is no scientific way of determing if there is a consciousness or not in things. This sucks. Anesthesia works with a mix of chemicals that 1: Gives you amnesia, 2: Paralyses your body so we dont even have a way of knowing if the anesthesia actually works because we dont have a device that shows if people are conscious or not. People could be suffering a lot and may not be able to express it and then dont recall it.One has to understand that consciousness is still a mistery in modern science. 100 years from now, consciousness wasn't even a topic of debate. As fransisco varela said, it was "unpolite" to throw the topic of consciousness in neurobiology discussion.

On the other hand there have been extensive studies of children who recall past lifes. If i remember the name of that man ( i believe it was a psychiatrist from some usa university) ill post it. The most interesting experiment that i heard of being done in this day's is on tulkus that remain in the clear light of death for days. Aparrently the brain gives like a signal just before it dies and that is like a unique print (similar to fingers) They were studying to tulkus to see if it match whit the new rebirth.

invisiblediamond wrote:Notice how you've selected similar stories? Now you won't find birds of a feather here. But you will elsewhere. When you all start confirming each other, and making plans, you will understand karma and rebirth. Change your ideas and you change societies.